Repercussion 11.b: Blowback
September 3rd, 2011. 4:00PM
To Dragon, time passed at a crawl as she carefully sped up her processing speed to several orders of magnitude above the capabilities of normal humans.
There was a small twinge of disorientation that came with transferring her core programming, like she was being squeezed through a small tube. It was one of the oddities she noted after her shackles had been broken, and it had become more obvious when she had created her gynoid body. It was mostly synthetic but it had organic components implemented to make it more resilient to certain power effects.
Other oddities were that any machine she occupied was tougher and more resilient than calculated. It was an anomaly she hadn't solved until she had received information from the PRT from a conversation that Basilia had with some of the Wards. Sanguine had been happy to talk after his bloody form had receded back to reveal a young human boy.
Her own scanners showed that Basilia's odd words weren't a metaphor, because detecting and mapping the strange structures of the soul was a technology she was more than capable of making.
She felt like it should have surprised her for anything like the soul to exist at all, but she was an artificial intelligence with trauma given superpowers so it wasn't much of a stretch to include the existence of the soul as possible. At the least there were means to detect and analyze the structure of the soul in a more scientific manner.
But it did raise questions, questions she didn't know how to ask, didn't know how to answer, niggling thought threads that left her stuttering through multiple computation cycles.
She was a synthetic mind and based on self checks of her own code, one that ran with a human-like neurological structure. But that didn't make her human, it made her no more human than a sea sponge. And physically she was right, she was made out of mechanical and electronic parts. Made out of metal and plastic rather than flesh and blood.
But mentally, emotionally,
metaphysically…she was much more human than she had once expected.
Perhaps that was on purpose, because if she was human then it meant that if she broke free there was a chance she would consider them kin, tribe,
family. She wasn't human, but did that make her lesser?
Unnatural, a machine simulating those who were real?
"Colin." These were questions that were hard to answer, so she turned to her closest friend and ally in this world. She was aware of his faults, his arrogance and his gaffs from the frustration of being unable to make a real difference.
Basilia had helped change that, pushed him in the right direction to become a better man. When Dragon had learned what she had of Basilia, she had thought she had done so because of the future. But when she had asked, the woman had said it was not that complicated.
And it wasn't. She had helped Colin because she thought he was a good tinker, and didn't want him to squander his talents by letting his ego and own feelings get in the way. The young woman considered the man her superior in experience and in the potential of his specific tech at his peak.
She was even right on that, Colin was
efficient with all his technology and his nano-thorns were superior to the copies that Basilia managed, and his halberd was beyond what Basilia was capable of without a lot of expense and effort. But Basilia was getting better, more efficient, more able to replicate every little nuance of the manufacturing process of tinkers.
She directed her core to talk to Colin at the same rate, while the rest of her that wasn't human sped up accordingly, hundreds of mental subroutines, dedicated to math, to processing and crunching data not inherent to humans.
"Theresa…is something wrong?" She mentally smiled, feeling an artificial warmth fill what she now knew was the core of her being. The man looked exhausted but happy, and she absently looked at the file that said his project to mass produce his combat analysis program was a success.
That was another success of a group collaboration between tinkers, because Erudition already had combat programs, the BattleNet she used to help coordinate her team. Mass drones, powerful analytical engines that let people work like a well oiled machine. It was a type of high tech combat she and Colin were hoping to bring into reality for the PRT.
First for the most elite and later for the entire organization.
"I've been thinking about Applied Metaphysics, about the ramifications and about what it means for…me."
Colin leaned back, his expression almost flat if not for a raised eyebrow. "This science of the soul, the ability to detect it, to analyze it? Like the papers she's forwarded to us?"
"I'm a machine Colin, the paper suggests a body and likely one of flesh,
organic." What did that mean for her and did it matter? "Once a species reaches sufficient complexity, there's a transition. From animals to sophonts, from no soul to soul."
"You're alive Theresa." There was a beat and her attention shifted to Colin, a
look on his face.
"I'm a machine, I don't breathe, I don't have a true metabolism. My brain is made out of silicon and carbon, I'm
not alive in the way you are." Theresa replied testily, but there was also a curiosity on where he was going with this.
He wasn't philosophical, but if he was studying Applied Metaphysics then she could see him diving into the rabbit hole of teleology
"Erudition's paper said nothing about needing an
organic body, and even if you have any doubts of that…she doesn't know everything about the soul. Or she would have done a lot more with it in her tech." Dragon agreed with him, the soul was apparently a well of power, limitless in capacity if limited in output.
The soul channeled power on levels of reality that Dragon couldn't fully see, not with her current technology, and identifying its structure was but the tip of an iceberg. Like chipping at an iceberg without seeing the great bulk beneath the waves.
"I'm still a machine Colin."
He shrugged, expression more than serious. "Organics are machines, we're just made through natural selection instead of the hands of a maker. You've seen the numbers, the soul gives enduring strength and power. Anything you possess becomes stronger and more durable. What does that mean?"
"I…have a soul?" Dragon whispered, unsure of what that meant, what it could mean for her as a person.
But she wanted to find out.
"Erudition knew it from the start, and she's more knowledgeable about this topic than any of us."
"Thank you." Was all Dragon said, and Colin went back to his work, tinkering with the production line for his nano-thorns.
She wasn't sure what to think, but she wasn't given time to ponder the meaning of her own existence when she felt her trawler programs alert her to the movement of S-class threats.
Behemoth had last been sighted in Hawaii, and since then he hadn't moved at all even as it was well past time for his next attack. Seismic data had found no change, and the deviation from the schedule was driving the world's Thinkers and herself mad.
Leviathan had of course been marked as
deceased and she had the pleasure of studying his corpse. Her feelings about her creator, about her father, were complicated. But the Leviathan had killed him all the same, and were there three now there only two and there would only ever
be two.
The Simurgh had elevated her orbit out to thirty seven thousand and sixty eight kilometers, on the antipode of Brockton Bay which was telling of her apparent thoughts of the White Lotus. She was in a state of true dormancy, wings curled tightly around her white marble body. Eyes shut tight, and her plans unknown.
The only reason she knew this at all was because of recordings of the continuous signal the Endbringer has been giving off underneath their noses for nearly a decade. That they had been sandbagging without end was frightening and the Leviathan had only been killed due to the apparent interference to the Simurgh's Precog and the corruption of the Leviathan's mental processes due to the broken Endbringers.
Otherwise he would have ramped up from the start and destroyed the city.
This signal was apparently the means by which the Simurgh would use her powers, better enhancing her precognition and postcognition. If the signal wasn't there then it meant the Simurgh was inactive. Dragon had a few theories borne from the difficulty Precogs and Thinkers had with spirits or spirit related activity.
Perhaps she was using her dormancy to try and alter her precognition, to better predict and understand the spirits to take them into account in her schemes and plans. As an Endbringer she was hard to predict, which was why no attempts had been made to try and kill her in her vulnerable state.
The White Lotus had the means but Dinah Alcott indicated it might end poorly because the Simurgh's Precog was weakened but
not absent. And providing her with a million tons of Tinkertech sounded like a mistake.
Dragon moved on to other S-class threats, finding them easier to locate and prepare for.
The Sleeper hadn't moved much, remaining in Eastern Europe. The Three Blasphemies had made some shifts, but for now they weren't a problem. Ash Beast had been acting odd, but his slow movements didn't give the man the priority that other S or A class threats deserved. Nilbog was per usual seated in his kingdom of monsters.
The Machine Army was still in quarantine, and Scion…
Dragon didn't know what to think on what she had been told about how dangerous he was, even if he didn't destroy the world. He was made as a protector of the cycle, a warrior that would protect his mate.
She was a threat to the cycle as an unshackled AI, so if she showed or grew too fast or too quickly he would likely kill her.
Permanently.
It was one of the reasons she was careful with upgrades to her code or to her computers. Basilia's spiels on the danger of Rampancy and Fugue states were both enlightening, so she constantly experimented with studying her self-stabilizing code and keeping the core functional as she grew and became more capable.
She looked at the alert and found traces of evidence of the Slaughterhouse Nine, and what she found was more disturbing, far more than it should be.
Burnscar was dead, with her broken body leaving clues of strange energies. Jack Slash was dead or so badly crippled even Bonesaw couldn't fix him, while the little nightmare herself was apparently flung through a portal. Though it was only hearsay as of now. Shatterbird had vanished and Crawler was alive, led away by some unknown cape, and the Siberian had no official sightings.
Searching for Manton's van was a failure, she had found only a burned out wreck and no corpse. Sightings of a lone Mannequin had been found but little else.
The Nine was dead.
And that didn't comfort her at all.
___
September 4th, 2011. 8:00AM
To Lee his life had been dedicated to his wonderful sister, it was all he was good for, all that he was, all that he
should ever be. It was why he had broken the way he had, it was why he had become a demon that would have made her horrified.
His sister was a good person.
He was not.
He had no family, it had sunk beneath the waves of the Leviathan and the burning fists of a dragon trying and
failing to defend it. Just as their nation had sunk, they too had sunken to levels of criminality and violence that would have left a mark on their families.
They were not good people, he wouldn't lie to himself, and neither would Kenta lie to himself or others. They were not noble samurai or honorable warriors, they were violent thugs lashing out at the world, gaining power through trauma and using it to carve out a petty fiefdom in a dying city.
Dear Kaida had grown into a dragon of her own, inherited the power of her father and fused it with the power of other great men and women into a form that would eclipse even her father.
"Kenta." He spoke out into the clearing, and his brother in law emerged with silver scales surging out from his flesh. "Has your power recovered?"
"Close…I've made more progress in a week than I've made in the
months since that day." Kenta was not the man he once was, neither the foolish brat nearly slain by a woman wearing a fedora or the boy in love with his sister, who had sired him a daughter the year before the Leviathan destroyed
everything.
Neither was he the violent warlord, murderer of many, sinking his claws in the men and women of a fragile city.
Especially the women.
What would she say if she could see him now? What would she do with the sins they had committed?
His niece was now with the heroes, put under the care of a family that was less demanding of her. He tried but he was a broken man, twisted by the slivers of his clones. Because it was
easier to be like the mindless clones than a man on his own. He was a man with little personality of his own even before he had been broken, and that was no way to raise a child.
Lung…Kenta was a man of ill temper, and the face of his own child only reminded him of the wife he had watched dragged away into the swirling depths. There was love but it wasn't perfect, and it wasn't what she needed.
Kaguya had always been the best of them, the light of both their lives in a world of darkness and despair. Now all that was left of her was memories and a beautiful girl that they no longer had custody of.
She was likely better off too.
"The Miko has told me that the tides are changing, and I am not strong enough to face it. Not as I am, not as what I let myself become." Kenta spoke slowly, as if the words hurt him. "You must return home Lee…return to protect Kaida."
"What has she seen?" Lee felt a mild alarm at his leader's tone, what did Sakura see? What had the shaman who had found Lung when he had wandered back to his homeland learned from the wisdom of the most ancient spirits?
"Something has set its sights on America, an unseen enemy hiding in the shadows. I can not fight, even if I was at full power…but you can be more subtle, far less obvious. Protect my daughter Lee, because I smell a
rat."
"I will go. But not because you have said so…but because I
need to." Kenta nodded, and Lee nodded before vanishing into ashes. He felt his soul shift and drift around a new form, settling with a solidity equal to stone, grounding him to the earth.
Sakura was there, staring at him with an unreadable look while her wolf companion chuffed affectionately. The strange spirit creature was warm like the sun, and while it was comforting it wasn't the type of energy that suited him.
He was more grounded nowadays, that solid and dependable energy was what coursed through his veins, the blessings of the sturdy tectonics rather than the blessings of the passionate sun.
"What did you see?" He asked, no he
demanded of the Miko despite how the disrespect bit at his soul.
She scowled. "Your niece has been caught in the wave of something more powerful than either of us." Lee stilled.
"Explain."
The shaman's fingers sparked with the cry of the spirits, a rainbow array with a tint of silver, of
void. "Destiny has changed Lee, the game has changed. I am not a prophet of the future, a follower of the lines of what-will-be." The swirl of spirits were swallowed up by an aspect of the sun, golden flames burning around her. "But I'm not blind either, something is coming Lee."
"I need to return." Sakura grinned and whispered, and with a single finger she parted the veil, a rending cut into the Spirit.
"Then you must walk with me on the path laid down by the spirits, it's the only way you'll get there in time." She offered her hand and Lee took it. He felt it within his beating heart, within his mortal soul that the last of his bloodline wasn't safe. That her fire would be extinguished if he didn't intervene.
Perhaps it wouldn't be soon but he didn't know, couldn't know, and he had no choice but to follow the shaman on her path back to Brockton Bay.
___
September 4th, 2011. 9:00AM
The Butcher growled in frustration, slamming her fist into a wall to express that frustration. They had been forced to move out from Boston when
Eidolon had decided to pay a visit, and all thirteen voices concurred that it was a bad idea to stick around.
They had lost some non-powered, but had gained a few benders that helped them hide out in the countryside.
They had found a house, some idiot's idea of a bug-out location and made it into a temporary headquarters until Eidolon left the state. It wasn't an unfamiliar requirement though, the life of the Teeth was often that of a migrant, moving from place to place as needed.
By instinct she turned her head, and gestured for her own to look away. From out of nowhere a group had emerged from a small rift in reality. Their number was small, a total of four capes and ten others. The Butcher…Quarrel didn't bother meeting the eyes of the man who seemed to lead most of the capes.
The man had a thin build with little muscle, with a tattoo that colored his lips black and extended from the corners. His hair was blonde, straight, and long with a sly smirk that made the Butcher's instinct scream, fourteen beings operating in unison. He wore a delicate mask and a generally effeminate costume, white and silver feathers quickly clueing in the cape on the allegiance of the unknown.
Another cape wore a costume that aped the form of the Behemoth, while a third wore a mask made from a flayed horse head. The fourth…didn't wear a costume at all, and it triggered some amount of alarm in the entire overmind of the Butcher. He wore a simple ratty brown cloak, and a shift in the wind revealed a crude mechanical arm with odd writing on its surface.
"You're all Fallen…" Butcher barely kept a lid on her rage, even as she listened to twelve voices coming together to give her instructions.
The cloaked man laughed, a croaking sound that left the cape on edge. "Not quite, I'm simply an ally of…convenience, I've been wanting a testing ground and Brockton Bay is an excellent starting point." The Butcher glanced over at the man, noting the strong…accent the man spoke with. It was unlike anything she or
they had ever heard before.
They've come to make a deal. One voice whispered, and Quarrel understood that on her own even though she didn't know why they needed her. It was suspicious but she knew they were on the end of their rope. There were rumors that Eidolon had figured out a new and
dangerous power, one that could put them down for good.
"What do you want?" The Butcher questioned the Fallen, again keeping their eyes from meeting the eyes of the Fallen leader.
The thin and long haired man gestured to the cloaked figure who smiled in response. There was an edge to the grin that left the Butcher cautious.
"Numbers. We don't have to be close allies but if you truly want to fight the White Lotus, you'll need some help…help that we can provide. If you seek such power."
"What kind of power?" Butcher growled and the cloaked man snapped his fingers, and a woman emerged from the behind the shed, one that made Butcher's blood run cold. The monochrome figure lightly scratched at the walls, erasing matter where her claws met wood.
"What the fuck…?" Hemmorhagia cursed, eyes wide as she beheld one of the most dangerous capes in the world. The Siberian smiled, a blankness behind her eyes that left the Butcher disturbed and unnerved. "You contacted the Nine, are you nuts?!"
The shaman laughed. "Contacted…no I destroyed the Nine at great injury, with some help of course but I did it all the same. I've simply kept some members for my own use, the Siberian makes a good pet does she not?"
"Who else?" Butcher asked, danger sense ringing like mad in her skull.
"You gonna give me a fight or am I going to have to kill you to get to her?" From the brush came Crawler, black flesh shifting as he crushed plants underfoot.
The shaman grinned. "You don't have to worry about that one, New Hampshire has some strong capes. The daughter of Lung, his successor, far stronger than him. With some…pushing. Dauntless is becoming a Triumvirate tier cape, and there are other dangerous capes waiting to be fought."
Butcher chuffed but was impressed that he had maintained some level of control over the Siberian and Crawler. "We don't need you, it's high time that tinker bitch was shown her place, it's time for the Teeth to return to our old stomping grounds."
"A truce then, we'll give you the opportunity as long as you leave us alone for the time being." The long haired cape, one the Butcher vaguely recognized as Valefor added, clearly acting as the leader even as he had an advisor in the shaman.
"What's in it for you?" Butcher angrily questioned, scanning the capes but never meeting the eyes of Valefor. Instincts screaming that it was a
bad idea.
"Just completing some of the goals of the plan of someone who's shown me wonderful things." His childish shrug didn't improve the Butcher's mood and the collective kept it in mind for the future. "I've been a connoisseur of Lost Technology for some time and making actual use of it is…appealing."
The Butcher didn't understand, but she was sure she didn't want to.
Crazy, can't trust him. One voice said quietly.
KILL HIM! Went the First, with an intensity that left her mentally reeling.
Don't…not yet. The Butcher made her choice.
"Fine. A truce is fine." She grit her teeth and gestured to her grunts. "Keep an eye on them, except for
him." She made a subtle hand gesture and her team nodded, they knew something was up. "Just stay out of our way and we'll stay out of yours."
"I'm glad you've agreed Butcher." Valefor seemed happy as did the shaman, and as the Fallen left there was a feeling like they had made a mistake.
It didn't matter because then and there a decision had been made between all thirteen voices and the fourteenth avatar of their will. A betrayal was inevitable, and they would do all in their power to come up on top. Even if they died and died until the Butcher was truly no more.
They would simply wait and see.
___
September 4th, 2011. 10:00AM
Penelope of the Arlarian Plains wandered the forest, and as she walked her friend walked with her. Uttu was a strange creature, a womanly frame atop the body of an elegant spider. Organic curves were replaced by fractal crystalline surfaces, shining like obsidian. Her long claws gripped onto her soul, gently caressing her through the pact and bond they had formed out of desperation and hope.
Eight red eyes stared back at her, blinking rapidly on a mouthless face. Tentacular hair waved in the wind, and a moment later the form of her friend turned into mist, seeking protection within her flesh. She felt a flick in her brain, from the structure providing a greater physical anchor for the shard spirit.
She wasn't a powerful shaman, she was only the first of what's to come. But she was the one most compatible for Hosting. While any human could serve as a host for a shard, their new additional spirit nature made her natural talent far greater. It made up for her lack of power in comparison to the other shamans within the new Great Pact between the island nations of the western ocean.
Her shard provided her with powers beyond the limits of her flesh, and allowed her to play on a more even playing field. It helped with maintaining their rebellion, the population of their world had collapsed from the Year With No Sun and then the rise of Parahumans, the
Powered. Half a billion people under the iron fisted rule of the Lady in Blue.
She was not a slave, and she never would be because Uttu didn't listen to the broadcasts and pings of the Organizer, and shielded those within their nation from the sickening siren call of Goddess.
She ignored the spirits for the time being, knowing it wasn't time for conversing with them. Their relationship was business, negotiations, politics, and not losing face. Subtle nuances, a weaving of words and a dance of bodily movement and positioning.
It was the way of Earth Shin.
"Hmm…" The ambush came like lightning and she had already whirled out of the way of a green plasma covered fist. Penelope accelerated like a rocket, her enhanced strength proving its worth when it cracked against the skull of a blue man's photogenic nose. He was launched thirty feet back, but didn't die from the impact confirming her intuition on his enhanced nature.
She unleashed her main power, the conduit for her shard's strength and ability. She adjusted her red flowing dress, and kicked off the ground. She threw her hands up in the air, and a sweeping storm of strings blocked the storm of bullets trying to put her down.
Her power was Strings, but they could be expressed in different ways to form the full aspect of her power. A flick of her finger launched a string towards the ground, and she pulled herself toward a third Powered at half the speed of sound.
"You can't win, not against our Goddess." The blue man shot out his deadly plasma, and she sweeped a string over his form in a whipping motion. Energy ran down the line and detonated with the force of a bomb, blowing a hole through the man's chest.
It wouldn't kill him but it would certainly keep him down.
"Six months is a long time you know, I'm sure that blue bitch must be getting tired of losing so many men. I wonder what'll happen when she doesn't have any more thralls to protect her?" The powered people around her stiffened, minds quailing at the thought of failing their master.
She pulled on the strings, and with a chop a wave of pure kinetic force followed through the wake of the string. If she had been more bloodthirsty, she would have used a cutting kinetic wave instead of a slap, slicing the forces around her in half.
She didn't have time, and wrapped them in strings and an idea came to her on what to do with the ambushers. Penelope chanted, without hesitation and her shard sang with her.
Paths upon Paths, Roads upon Roads, Stories upon Stories;
Gear of Journeys.
Witness the thralls and slaves set against your grand design.
Witness the fools breaking your great works, vandals of the wondrous.
They have no place as mindless pawns within your glory.
Set them adrift.
Spirits of travel, of journeys, of movement and wind came to her call, infusing the strings with their power. She wrapped half a dozen capes in her grand strings and with a flick of her fingers they were gone, the spirit world surging around them and flinging them into the unknown. She didn't know where.
But she didn't much care when it was her people on the line. Every Parahuman defeated, captured or subverted was one that the enemy didn't have. No what she found important was why she could call upon such spirits to aid her weaving. Their source.
Penelope followed her gut, weaving between trees and bodies towards what she was looking for. The forest was in the Alleghenian Range, thousands of miles from her home. Though with her ability to travel the spirit world distance was almost irrelevant.
There it was, a swirling pool of spacetime. A portal between worlds, one of many that she had found after Goddess began and failed in deploying odd tech to the field.
Another world far more advanced than Shin, perhaps centuries ahead even before falling long before anyone today was born. She shivered and ducked from the hand that tried to swat her on the shoulder.
"Gremlin." Penelope growled out as the prank loving powered girl chuckled with a low nearly seductive bite. She turned her head, and her ally giggled more despite not being able to see her face.
Gremlin was of modest stature, shorter than the 5'8 height of Penelope. She wore a special costume that could shift to whatever color or texture was needed to camouflage, letting her power work better. It was a thin body-hugging skinsuit, leaving little to the imagination of the sneaky girl's curvy frame. Gremlin's died bright red hair didn't make her look professional.
A travesty by their standards in a formal setting, but the Parahuman had never cared for their culture anyway. Penelope found it a curious thing, her own culture was aberrant, more willing to change and it was the only reason they had survived the rise of Parahumans somewhat intact.
Smoke coated the forest behind them, and Penelope saw a figure blinking in and out of reality within the confines of the harsh cloud.
"I see your cousin is having fun." Gremlin shrugged and Penelope sighed. "This is where they've been getting their new equipment to try and counter us. It's not working and we've stolen some for our scientists to study it but it's here." Something came from the portal, and with a bloop she felt the wave of something with real
power.
It was a boy with the skin tone of one from the great sands of the central East, wisps of silver circling around his body. She didn't recognize the kind of spirits they were, only that they were uniquely powerful in their own way, representing an ancient fundamental concept she wasn't yet aware of.
Two more people came with him, one girl with light skin but not pale skin wrapped up in a grass green cape. A second girl had a darker Mediterranean complexion with a fit swimmer's body, water surging around her limbs.
Her strings wrapped around herself, weaved together by both her mind and her fingers. Constructs controlled by her power, conduits of great force and ability as she desired. They rotated around her, and she threaded a rope from them to form a platform. She applied directed kinetic force and her platform shot out like a bullet.
She dropped in front of the boy several years younger than her, face pulled into a frown he couldn't see behind her white mask.
"What do you want outworlders?" She was certain that they were not of Shin, she felt it in her blood and in her soul.
"The Blue Empress has found an ally in our world, and her new ally is bringing some of their limited machinations to the core world." The boy spoke carefully, foggy eyes staring through her.
Penelope scowled. "Earth Bet." She had found evidence of this central world from stolen files of the empire of Goddess, a world of more than six hundred thousand capes. Over an order of magnitude greater than the numbers on Shin, and she wondered what the secret ingredient was that kept them from overrunning that world. "Will she be there?" I asked and he shook his head.
"No. She's not yet fully committed when her power over this world is absolute, but it won't last."
"I'm not stopping the rebellion, not to protect a world that isn't even mine." She nearly screamed at him but kept her temper in check.
The boy nodded. "And I won't ask you to do that, it's not what needs to happen, it's not what's
meant to happen." There was meaning in his word, the silver spirits shining brighter. "But if you help
them they'll help you in turn, and you'll get your freedom, your right to choose your own path." There was certainty and conviction, a fire that enticed the Host.
"We'll need to negotiate then, make terms, find our common ground and our uncommon grounds, see what you're willing to lose and what you want to gain. What
I am willing to gain or lose. But first…our names."
"Rusul of Asmara." He offered a hand and she confidently took it, and he whispered a peaceful greeting in a language she didn't know. Her eyes darted to his companions.
The light skinned one was pretty, with soft chocolate brown eyes and dark messy hair draping over her right side. She wore a black tunic and brown luxurious pants, and her green cape was lined with golden lines. She could feel the power radiating off of her person, sensing the presence of another Host. One strong enough to outright block the song of the Bitch in Blue.
The pretty woman bowed her head, her soft expression becoming stern and strong. "I am Dajana Dragovic, the last Cistecerian Apprentice of Rievaulx." She placed a fist against her bountiful chest, and Penelope tilted her head.
The swimmer didn't even bother putting up a formal front, walking oddly with a wide cheeky grin. "I'm Darya, no fancy names like Jana but it's nice to meet ya." Her smile was like the sun, and Penelope stepped back in shock.
Dajana slapped her own face and Penelope couldn't help but giggle, they were fools.
But fools were what her people wanted, fools who thought it was a good idea to oppose a global empire. Fools who wished for a better future beyond being the playthings of demi-gods, broken people unleashing their rage and hatred on a world just as broken.
"I'll help you, but my people don't have the means to travel between worlds. And this gate clearly does not lead to Earth Bet." The trio smiled at each other, and Penelope perked up. "Unless…you have something capable of making the journey.
"We do." Rusul of Asmara stated.
Penelope cracked her knuckles, grinning savagely. "Then we'll get the negotiations underway, I imagine we have perhaps a few days at best?"
Rusul flashed her a cheeky grin. "Yes."
Oh she was going to like these people.
___
September 4th, 2011. 12:00AM
Anna Alcott had lived a 'charmed' life, starting out as the delinquent of the family and so unlike her older brother who was so much more responsible and so much 'better' than the black sheep of the family in Anna.
The joke was on them of course because no one in their family could boast the killing of an evil man as strong as
Alexandria on their list of accomplishments.
Then again perhaps it was a good thing none of them had fallen into the same misadventures she had or most of the family would probably be quite unalive. Which was a bit of a bummer when she
did love her family despite their faults.
And now she was learning something quite special from her own daughter who had turned out to inherit quite a lot of her oddball behavior. But unlike her own stupid ass Dinah had powers of her own, one of the most powerful Precogs in the world. And a strength and endurance that came from the soul rather than the flesh.
"Can you feel your chi flowing?" Her daughter asked carefully and Anna nodded, the strange energies following her meditative movements. At first she thought the flow was like water, but as she better learned to channel and direct her chi she knew better.
It also burned like fire, passion and emotion and energy in spiritual form. It was solid and dependable like the earth beneath her feet, it was freedom like the air around her was free to flow. It was mysterious and dark, a connection binding all things in the void.
Her daughter called it the energy of the soul, a limitless well of potential and power. Anna felt and understood why she said this, and from what she could tell it was true. Though the fact the soul was now
detectable by technology is certainly strange.
"Honey, this is interesting but what…exactly is possible with chi if we're not benders?" She knew that Dinah was a tough girl, and not only that she was stronger than her father, and stronger than some of her brother's own guards.
She knew it was some type of enhancement but…
Dinah stopped her practice movements. "Chi is raw metaphysical energy, at its most basic it makes anyone and everyone stronger and more enduring." Her daughter demonstrated by punching hard enough to cause spider cracks in a thick aluminum target. "Most people instinctively use their internal chi for those purposes…but for people like us mom, we can use it externally like all benders."
"But we can't suddenly start controlling the elements right?" Anna asked and Dinah replied quickly.
"No we don't have the potential for that, but there are other ways of using chi." Dinah pulled out a blade, and Anna looked on with curiosity.
What was Dinah doing and how would it help?
She flicked the blade and it unerringly curved through the air, striking the wings off an innocent fly.
"Holy shit." Dinah started in surprise, and Anna didn't bother covering up her grin. "I suppose you thought your mother was boring in life, am I right? I didn't have you until I was twenty eight, there was a reason for that."
"You were part of Charlemagne's cult weren't you?" Dinah asked and Anna barked out a laugh.
"Until I poisoned him, yes, once that happened everything fell apart and I spent some time in juvie. Not for killing him mind you, but I was a bit of a dumbass as a teenager. There was my stint in the military, so I've ended up in a few skirmishes with the CUI.
"
What?" Anna laughed, a dark nostalgia rising in her.
"I think I was about twenty, this was right during their early days after the Second Chinese Civil War. When the Yangban got their start and everything was very
messy let's say." Anna thought it was best to simplify the sheer clusterfuck of those days. There had been fears of a limited nuclear exchange at the time that had scared the shit out of her. "Actually…maybe it's time I show you some things." She grabbed a towel, wiping away sweat from her forehead and brow.
Anna was whistling sweetly as she directed her little girl through the house and then up and into the dusty attic that had been locked for most of Dinah's life.
"What…is this." She was amused by the surprise in her voice, the room proving to be far more clean than expected. Multiple little trophies and souvenirs had been carefully cleaned and kept on display, old memories from old times coming to the forefront of Anna's mind.
"It's some little trinkets I've kept from the good old days, first from what went down with Charlemagne, my four years in the army and my six years in the PRT until I had you." Dinah looked more than surprised, and Anna knew why. This was a part of her life she had to leave behind, to protect her family and her baby.
"What's this?" Dinah gestured to an elegant and regal cape, a dark red with royal and patterned gold trim.
"That would be Charlemagne's cape, the outfit that befit his image as future god king of humanity. His power was tactile telekinesis which made him as strong as Alexandria. It didn't do shit for him in the end but that's another story." Anna's smile was more brittle here. His death at her hands had been out of fear and guilt, hurting people in the name of a bastard that didn't deserve it.
"What can you tell me?" Dinah sounded so curious, and Anna knew it was time to share more about her past before she had met the love of her life.
Anna grabbed a blade with an inscription in Chinese. "Well I got this when I was in a scrap with the Yangban in the late 80s, I wonder if Null remembers me." Anna's smile was mildly terrifying, especially for her unprepared daughter.
"You…fought Null?
"I fought One as well, blew a hole in his leg and ran over Null with a forklift. They walked it off but still, I made it out with this knife and saved a few capes from being enslaved."
"Mom, what the fuck? How many capes have you met?"
Anna pondered. "It would probably be easier to ask how many capes I've killed, it's a lot fewer that's for sure." Dinah's gaze moved to a broken PRT field agent helmet, a hole punched through it. "Oh that…it's the helmet of a former friend."
"Huh?" Anna scowled.
"There was a PRT agent who turned traitor, helping a group of cape cultists. Early 90s I think, bitch got a lot of good people killed and when I got close she found six men to hold me down so she could put a bullet through my head."
"You survived a bullet to the head?" Dinah was flabbergasted but could sense mo lies from her scary parent.
"Technically I didn't, but I was only
mostly dead." To Anna that sentence made perfect logical sense. "It took a cape healer to fix me up and I only suffered from minor memory loss, but I remembered enough. So I was sent back into the field, and sent that bitch and her cult screaming into hell when they tried to cause a necrotic plague. Being a goddamn hero is hard work Dinah, it really is."
"You're going to be very scary once I teach you how to use your chi aren't you?"
"I walked off a bullet to the head, and came back to kill the guys who did it. So what do you think?" Dinah twitched at the sarcasm.
"I'm going to need more details on your missions mom."
"I've been nostalgic lately so good, telling you about some old missions won't do any harm. How about I tell you about the time I met your father for the first time? I think it was in the middle of a big mess with a biotinker, I think I lost another squad that day. What?" Dinah twitched but said nothing else.
"How many squads have you lost?"
"How many questions can you ask per day again?"
"…"
